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Talk Citation

Finkel, M.A. (2018, August 28). Suspected child sexual abuse and the role of the health care professional in diagnosis and treatment 1 [Video file]. In The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection, Henry Stewart Talks. Retrieved September 15, 2019, from https://hstalks.com/bs/3797/.

Publication History

Published on August 28, 2018

Financial Disclosures

Prof. Martin A. Finkel has not informed HSTalks of any commercial/financial relationship that it is appropriate to disclose.

Transcript

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0:00

My name's Martin Finkel.I'm a pediatrician and Professor of Pediatrics and founder and co-director ofthe Child Abuse Research Education and Service Instituteat Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine.It's my pleasure to be able to spend some time with you and present toyou an area of my interests, child sexual victimization.I'm going to speak to you about the role of the healthcare professionalin diagnosis and treatment of suspected child sexual abuse.A problem that I've been working on for over 37 years.The challenges presented themselves at the beginning and they stillcontinue to bring challenges to all of us as clinicians.

0:36

I like to share with youa historical and developmental perspective on medicines discovery of this new disease,the sexual victimization children.There were a number of forces that were happening at the time thatresulted in society taking on this societal scourge.The first was a publication of a seminal paper by Dr. C. Henry Kempe 1962,The Battered Child Syndrome.In many ways, I guess medicine did not deny the reality that children who presented tous with injuries that we could actually see with our naked eye, bruises, implement hurts,burns or things that could be seen through imaging,broken bones that we can no longer accept in a naive waythat these injuries were incurred by children in the manner that they were described.We no longer could be so naive to believe thatchildren entrusted to parents would not harm their children.Medicine responded, diagnostic criteria,increase awareness of the issue of childmaltreatment spread throughout the pediatric community.Doctors became very comfortable,asking more probative questions and no longer beingso naive and making the diagnosis of child physical abuse.In 1998, Dr. Kempe published another seminal paper,The Sexual Abuse Of Children Another Hidden Pediatric Problem.It's interesting that medicine did not respond withthe same degree of enthusiasm that respond to the physical abuse.All of the skills the doctors amassed in terms oftheir diagnostic skills for physical abuse interestinglywe're not transferable to the issue of child sexual victimization,in great part, because I would say it was a different disease a different phenomenon,a different set of historical constructs.The physical abuse of childrenmanifested by things we could actually see with our naked eye,where in sexual victimization as we will learn as we go through this talk,the most available evidence inthese kids is not things that are seen through the naked eye.There are parallel developments in social work,and mental health, the rape crisis movement, and law,that created an environment that made it muchmore reasonable to take on this very difficult issue.In the United States, the American Academy of Pediatrics actually in only in 1989,developed the first section on child abuse and neglect.Yet we know that the child abuse and neglect has beensomething that's been going on since time in memorial.American Board of Pediatrics recognize child abuse as a subspecialty in 2009,leading to ultimately board certification in this field.So, how rare is this disease of sexual victimization.